


Courtship

by julie_slamdrews



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-26 07:27:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30102381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie_slamdrews/pseuds/julie_slamdrews
Summary: Cathy likes Anne. Anne might like Cathy too. They're not very good at doing anything about it. The others try to help (they don't always succeed).Or Idiots Pining when they could just Have a Conversation.
Relationships: Anne Boleyn/Catherine Parr
Comments: 18
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was entirely spawned out of CynicalRainbows expressing concern over Cathy and Anne's movie nights being cancelled when I posted Somnus yesterday. That, plus the fact that I'm now obsessed with fluff and the fact that these two nerds like each other a Lot and are very bad at expressing it. (Which I can't understand at all as I'm great at communication. So great that it took my last gf and I a full year to admit we liked each other.)
> 
> I have four chapters planned at the moment, but that may evolve as I write.

Movie night for Cathy and Anne usually focused on one of two genres.

Most frequently they watched low-budget horror movies, which were generally more frightening for their appalling scripts, cheap sets, and lack of discernible acting talent than for any of the advertised ‘scares.’ Occasionally these were abandoned in favour of whispery arthouse films in foreign languages with pretentious names and incomprehensible plots.

Cathy spent the horror movies watching Anne, laughing at her commentary, and occasionally burrowing into her for protection from monsters (the fact that she was very soft and smelled nice was only a pleasant by-product of this and absolutely not the cause of the burrowing). She spent most of the arthouse films asleep.

Tonight, though, was a little different. Different primarily because neither of them had chosen the film. In fact, neither of them had chosen to have movie night at all.

(It should have been yesterday, but the less said about yesterday the better as far as Cathy was concerned.)

It had been Catalina who had found the film, Catalina who had asked them to watch it with her, and then Catalina who had vanished without trace five minutes after the credits had rolled.

Not that Cathy minded exactly, spending time alone with Anne was…nice (actually she thought it was more than nice, but she didn’t have a word for the specific feeling that being alone with Anne gave her so nice would have to do for now). It was strange though, given how excited she had seemed about the whole thing.

But before long she was distracted by the movie, which appeared, as she told Anne, to be “subverting the romantic comedy genre.”

(The others would listen politely when she got academic about mundane things, but she sometimes got the sense that they weren’t really that interested. Anne, on the other hand, never looked bored or confused or irritated even when Cathy went into long and overly detailed monologues. In fact, she would often answer them with an equally enthusiastic and rambling speech.

Sometimes her theories were even better than Cathy’s. Cathy had mixed feelings about those times.)

It was about twenty minutes in that she had the epiphany. That she realised which particular synonym for ‘nice’ she had been looking for earlier.

On the screen, one of the main characters was giving a speech about what love was, about how you knew when you’d fallen in love, and Cathy felt her breath stutter. _Oh._

“Anne..?” She started before she could help herself, then closed her mouth again tightly.

Words were kind of her thing. She knew a lot of them, ones that most other people didn’t know like overmorrow (the day after tomorrow) and dactylonomy (the act of counting using one’s fingers) and calllipygian (having shapely buttocks). But she didn’t know the right words in the right order for what she wanted to ask Anne, to tell Anne.

She could write them down maybe, given a lot of time and a lot of screwed-up paper, but she doubted even then that she’d be able to actually say them without stammering or blushing or maybe even crying. She wished that love letters hadn’t gone out of fashion, they were much more elegant and removed the mortifying ordeal of actually having to watch the object of your affections react to your words.

“Cathy?” Anne’s voice cut into her swirling thoughts. Cathy’s initial question had apparently interrupted her mid-stretch and she let her arms hover over her head a little awkwardly for a second before dropping them back into her lap.

Cathy scanned the room, searching for a replacement question for the one she couldn’t voice, and finally seized upon it.

“Where do you think Catty went?”

Anne seemed briefly to deflate, her answering shrug somehow less animated than usual. Then she brightened again and a wicked twinkle appeared in her eyes.

“I’m sure I can get her if you want her.”

She drew in a huge breath and Cathy realised just in time what was about to happen.

“Don’t you dare!” She clapped a hand over Anne’s mouth, trying hard not to think about those pink lips moving beneath her fingers. “She said she’d kill you if you did that again and I really think she meant it!”

Anne exhaled all the air in a whoosh into Cathy’s hand. Cathy pulled it back, hoping she wasn’t blushing. She felt very much as if she might be.

But Anne was distracted enough not to notice how much blood had rushed to Cathy’s cheeks. She was scowling.

“She asked for it,” she muttered. “Telling me I couldn’t have jam without her supervision! I’m not a child!”

Cathy remained diplomatically silent. Her godmother could perhaps be a little heavy-handed when it came to dealing with Anne’s hijinks, but the jam wars really had got out of hand (even if Kitty swore she loved her new undercut and wasn’t upset with Anne in the slightest). And while it was annoying not to be able to eat what you wanted when you wanted it, she somehow doubted whether Anne had really wanted a jam sandwich at three in the morning.

She looked to the screen for assistance. She didn’t find anything that might diffuse the current situation, but now the characters were talking about coming out, and Cathy felt that maybe she ought to take notes. (There were several aspects of her new life in which she thought she could benefit from a script.)

She was fully engrossed in the movie by the time Anne nudged her again. Any leftover annoyance from the reminder of past injustices seemed to have deserted her and she was grinning widely, the sparkle returned to her eyes.

“I’m going to do that.” She pointed at the screen and Cathy’s breath stuttered in her throat again as she imagined Anne’s fingers on her waist, their bodies pressed together.

“You…you are?”

“Yeah!” Anne said with gusto. “I’m going to imagine my mouth is the largest cathedral in the world…what is the largest cathedral in the world?”

“The Basilica of Our Lady Aparecida,” Cathy supplied, a small pit of disappointment forming in her stomach even as her breathing calmed. “Or St Peter’s is the largest church building.”

“Maybe St Peter’s,” Anne said thoughtfully. “I can visualise that better. And I’m going to fill that space up with sound and…”

“Catty’s going to murder you.” Cathy finished for her.

“She only said I wasn’t allowed to shout her name like that when she was sleeping.” Anne protested. “She can’t keep moving the goalposts.”

Cathy made a mental note to find somewhere else to be the next day. And maybe to lend her godmother some earplugs.

The next hour passed relatively uneventfully, barring Cathy’s sudden intense awareness of the space her body occupied on the sofa, of the shape of Anne’s beside her, of all the little places they might touch (if she was braver). She kept sneaking little glances at Anne too, and once or twice their eyes even connected (but only very briefly, Cathy always tipped hers back to the screen very quickly when that happened).

When they reached the end of the film, Anne nudged her again.

“Would you come if I shouted your name like that?”

Cathy’s mouth went very, very dry. “Yes,” she managed, and then seeing Anne start another enormous intake of air quickly amended “but don’t do it now! Wait until I’m very far away.”

She thought Catalina’s murder threat probably extended to all shouting done after what her godmother usually called Reasonable Bedtime Hours (and what Cathy corrected in her own head to the Most Fun Part Of The Day).

Anne looked suddenly pensive. She often got this way at the end of their movie nights, a combination of tired and philosophical which resulted in some interesting and often emotional discussions. Today, what she said was: “I don’t want you to be very far away.”

Cathy would unpick and replay these words over and over during the next few hours. She would also replay her own response, all the while biting the inside of her cheek to stifle the urge to scream.

(“Good job my room’s just down the hall then!”

I mean really, what was wrong with her? The idea of a script was sounding better with every passing second.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this whole chapter from Cathy's perspective, then changed my mind and decided it would make much more sense from Anne's so had to rewrite the whole thing. This also gets a bit angsty in the beginning because apparently everything I touch turns to angst. 
> 
> The other queens don't help so much as hinder in this chapter, they'll get back to being helpful next time. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who reviewed and/or left kudos on the first chapter - you all keep me writing!

Anne was a lot more perceptive than she was sometimes given credit for.

She knew, among other things, how everyone took their tea, their favourite TV shows (and their real favourites too, because no matter how much Catalina might extoll the virtues of Newsnight, the television was always left on Channel 4 when she’d been alone in the house), how to cheer them up when they were down and how to drive them absolutely up the wall. (She could have used this last bit of knowledge to avoid such behaviour, but sometimes she lacked the necessary restraint.)

But Catherine Parr was still a mystery to her, at least in one very important area. She knew that she liked to watch University Challenge (and that she got a frightening number of the answers right), that she took her tea not as tea at all (“why would you drink that when the coffee is _right there_?”), that she woke up properly when everyone else was ready for bed, that she enjoyed horror movies but had to cover her eyes if there was too much blood, that a little crinkle appeared between her eyebrows when she smiled, the list went on…

What she didn’t know was how Cathy felt about her.

She could ask, she supposed, in fact she could ask in one of five different languages. Six if you counted Esperanto, which she had studied for a weekend when they first came back before learning that it was something of a failed experiment as far as international diplomacy was concerned. (She could still express herself tolerably well in it though.)

The trouble was, she didn’t want to ruin what they already had. She remembered too many instances of being drawn into conversation with men, of discussing literature and debating religion, and then the creeping horror of realising that they were looking for something else entirely from the conversation. (They’d never got as far as Kitty’s suitors but she had still needed a very strong drink after hearing her cousin’s song for the first time.) She didn’t want to ever make Cathy feel that way.

(Besides, she did enjoy watching movies with her, debating with her, making pizza at three in the morning with her when they were the only two in the house still awake. She didn’t want to lose all that on the off chance of something more.)

So she looked for signs that that kind of advance might be warranted, welcomed even. Sometimes she thought she saw a flicker of interest, but Cathy always seemed to wall herself off immediately afterwards.

Anne found herself being louder, brasher, more irritating in response to this. As if that would help, as if quiet, clever Cathy would be attracted to that. She couldn’t seem to turn it off though.

But today, she thought she had the perfect plan.

She found Cathy in the kitchen, eating breakfast with the others.

“I’ve found an arcade,” she burst out, interrupting their conversation mid-flow. “So we can do the dance. Like in the movie!”

Silence. Cathy just blinked at her, her expression unfathomable. Anne was berating herself - too much, too soon, too fast - when two other voices piped up from the table.

“I’ve never been to an arcade!”

“A dance machine, what fun!”

Kitty and Anna.

This hadn’t been in her plan at all, and if it had just been Anna she would have taken her aside and explained that it was very important that she had some kind of accident in the next five minutes rendering her completely unable to take any trips to the arcade. But Kitty had her hands clasped under her chin and her eyes were sparkling and Anne had never been able to deny her cousin anything.

So instead she forced herself to smile and say: “Great, group outing!”

She dimly registered that Catalina looked like she wanted to murder someone (probably her, although she wasn’t sure what exactly she’d done to prompt it this time). But Cathy smiled and echoed: “Great, group outing!”

(Clearly spending time alone with Anne had been the problem. So that was her answer then.)

She was briefly glad Anna had invited herself when they got to the arcade, because it turned out she knew the dance routine very well. Not that she would admit to having practiced it. She just launched into it, step-perfect and then paused with a slightly self-conscious smile and a “I think that’s how it goes?” (It was exactly how it went.)

From someone else this might have been irritating, but Anna didn’t rub it their faces or complain if they fell out of step with her. She even proclaimed Kitty losing her balance and almost catapulting herself over the railing of the machine to be a “good addition” to the dance, which was pushing it slightly.

Anne was just starting to think that this outing might be a success after all, if not the success she had initially wanted, when she noticed Cathy.

Cathy was sitting on the floor, watching the others dance, and she didn’t look like she was enjoying the trip even a little. Anne went to sit beside her, suggested they tried out the dance together or found something else to do or even left entirely, but Cathy seemed to get more annoyed in response to each new suggestion, insisting that she was “fine” and “enjoying watching” and couldn’t Anne just “leave it.”

So Anne did, stomping back to the dance machine and ‘enjoying herself’ furiously for a few minutes until Anna announced that she was “tired” and “wanted to do something else.” (She didn’t look in the least bit tired, but Anne had had enough of arguments for one day.)

They were making a circuit of the arcade, exclaiming over various machines, when Anne noticed that Cathy was actually showing signs of interest in something. She followed her gaze. Of course, the pub quiz machine. Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner?

She trailed over to the machine, examined it. Looked over her shoulder and gave Cathy a tentative smile. This time it was returned.

“I bet we can beat this thing,” she said, making sure it was obvious this invitation was extended to Cathy. Only to Cathy. She didn’t want any more confusion on that front.

It seemed, for a while, like they were indeed going to beat the machine. They answered question after question correctly, and concocted elaborate victory dances to celebrate each success (Cathy seemed less opposed to this kind of dancing). And then, as they hovered on the verge of a £50 payout, they found their nemesis. A sports question.

“Where’s Anna when you need her?” Anne asked, pounding a fist against the side of the machine in frustration. Cathy shrugged, looking equally frustrated. On the screen the flashing red numbers of the countdown taunted them and Anne reached out to jab at a random answer. The wrong random answer.

The joy and frivolity of the past few minutes evaporated as the words ‘Game Over’ appeared on the screen.

“Another game?” Anne suggested. “We might actually beat it this time.”

“We should probably find the others,” Cathy said instead, seeming to have lost interest in the machine.

That was Anne’s own fault, she thought. She shouldn’t have mentioned Anna, shouldn’t have drawn attention to the fact that the others had drifted off somewhere. It wasn’t as if she’d missed them after all.

When they did find the others, Anna informed them in no uncertain terms that having an interest in fitness did not equip her in any way to answer a question about football. In fact, she said, if she ever displayed any interest in football it would be a sign that she was gravely ill and needed to be taken to a doctor immediately.

(This diffused the tension somewhat, but all the same Anne decided she would have to plan her alone time with Cathy more carefully in future. In particular, she needed to make sure that they were actually alone.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to everyone who has read, commented and kudosed - I hope you'll all enjoy this next part.

“I’m dying!” Anna flopped dramatically over the kitchen table, muffling a cough into her folded arms.

This was nothing new. Anna proclaimed that she was dying at least once a month, despite evidence that the various minor ailments she suffered from could invariably be cured with soup, paracetamol and sleep.

So the comment prompted a few gentle eye rolls even as Jane rushed to put the kettle on and Kitty patted Anna sympathetically on the back. Cathy, however, was mostly confused. She was sure she’d seen Anna doing star jumps in the garden just a few hours earlier (when she had been on her way to bed and Anna, presumably, just getting up). Did sick people usually have the energy for star jumps?

She was just about to ask about this when Anna raised her head again, giving the room her best ‘woe is me’ look. “I was so looking forward to ice skating too,” she said mournfully.

“Don’t worry,” Anne said, seeming oddly cheerful for someone whose plans had just been ruined. “I don’t want your death on my hands.”

“Maybe one of the others can go,” Anna suggested, voice muffled as she had dropped her head back to the table again.

Anne turned a hopeful face on the rest of the queens. “Does anyone want to come? There’s a new temporary rink in Hyde Park. Not quite skating on the Thames, I know, but it should be fun.”

“We already got tickets,” came Anna’s muffled voice. “Shouldn’t let them go to waste.”

“What a coincidence!” Catalina clapped her hands together. “Weren’t you just saying you wanted to learn how to skate, mija?”

Cathy opened her mouth to correct her godmother, to explain that all she’d actually said was that she _couldn’t_ skate. She hadn’t expressed any desire to learn.

But Anne was looking at her now, her whole face luminous with excitement.

“Oh Cath, let me teach you! I’ve got excellent balance, I won’t let you fall!”

Catalina snorted into her coffee and Cathy knew she was wondering how this claim of ‘excellent balance’ stacked up against last week’s incident involving a pair of wheeled shoes, a broken curtain rail, and a midnight trip to A&E.

“That was different!” Anne was clearly thinking of the same incident. “Heelys force your centre of gravity backwards. It’s really much easier to balance on skates, and I’ve had a lot more practice!”

She turned pleading eyes on Cathy, who knew she was powerless to resist.

The trouble was, she wasn’t at all convinced she’d be good at ice skating. She lacked the natural grace and athletic ability of Anna, or indeed Anne (Heely accidents notwithstanding). She had always preferred activities which involved sitting down. Inside. With minimal risk of broken bones. Ice skating did not tick any of these boxes.

She almost asked if any of the others wanted to come too (she was sure it would be more fun for Anne to be accompanied by someone who knew what they were doing) but then she remembered their disastrous arcade outing. How miserable and left out she’d felt, how ungrateful when the others had tried their best to include her. Maybe it would be better if it was just the two of them. And she couldn’t deny that the idea of Anne holding her up was…enticing.

The rink was busier than she expected, crowded with children hopped up on sugar and Christmas spirit careening around at breakneck speed. Almost as dangerous were the groups of students fuelled with more mulled wine than was strictly sensible for three in the afternoon (and even more so given that they were wearing knives strapped to their feet and attempting to balance on them on a slippery surface). Just looking at it made her want to turn around and go right back home.

She took as long as possible fastening her skates, urging Anne to go on ahead and test the ice out as she tied and retied the knots in her laces.

Anne did so, weaving with ease through the crowds and even finding enough space to turn a series of pirouettes (eagerly copied, Cathy noticed, by a group of small girls with puffy coats and pigtails). Then she glided back to the barrier and hung over it, grinning.

“If you tie any more knots in those you’ll never get them off again,” she teased gently. “Imagine wearing skates for the rest of your life!”

Cathy got reluctantly to her feet and immediately wobbled, unaccustomed to having to balance her weight on a knife edge.

“Don’t expect any tricks from me,” she warned. “Staying upright might be enough of a challenge.”

Anne laughed, held out a hand. “I’ll keep you upright,” she promised.

It was, shockingly, not as bad as Cathy expected. She did flinch every time anyone else got too close (especially the small children, who seemed to have made it their mission to take everyone else on the rink out at the knees) and whenever she remembered where she was her feet skittered dangerously on the slick surface, but other than those minor inconveniences it was rather nice. She hadn’t fallen over or lost a finger and, most importantly, Anne had kept an arm around her waist the whole time. (Apparently this was better for stability than just holding hands, but Cathy really didn’t care all that much about the reasoning, as long as Anne didn’t stop. Preferably ever.)

“Now,” Anne said, when Cathy was just about to suggest getting off the ice altogether. (Yes it would mean losing that arm around her, but they could go sit in one of those cute little booths that lined the ice and maybe get some mulled wine. That might make her brave.) “What do you think about trying a very tiny spin?”

Cathy thought that sounded like possibly the worst idea ever, but she was beginning to learn that she would agree to just about anything when Anne looked at her like that. And everything had been going so well up to this point.

The spin went well too, initially. It was very, very tiny and she thought that Anne had provided more of the kinetic energy required to fuel it than she had, but there was no denying that she did turn around.

“I did it!” She gasped, seeing her own joy reflected back at her in Anne’s eyes. She was just thinking that maybe she didn’t need any wine to be brave after all when something collided sharply with her legs and suddenly she wasn’t upright anymore. She was lying on the ice, legs tangled with Anne’s and both of them were groaning.

A child’s face appeared above her, eyes huge and frightened.

“Sorry Miss!” He said. “Are you alright?”

“Now you’ve done it!” A second boy’s voice came from somewhere behind her. “Everyone knows that old people’s bones are soft like chalk.”

“That’s right!” A third voice said, a girl this time. “I expect they’ll want to sue you. If you need a lawyer,” she added. “My daddy’s the best small claims solicitor in the Home Counties. He’s got a paperweight on his desk that says so.”

Cathy almost protested that, though she was in many ways just as unfathomably old as they thought, this body couldn’t be more than around thirty and therefore not quite at risk of osteoporosis just yet. But she thought the sentiment might be lost somewhat on the assembled children.

Instead she struggled into a seated position, conducted a quick check of her limbs and assured the children that she needed neither an ambulance nor a lawyer. Beside her, Anne had also returned to an upright position and was poking at her ankle and wincing.

“No lawyers,” she agreed. “But I’m not so sure about the ambulance.”

Three hours later Anne and her thankfully unbroken ankle had been dispatched from A&E with a prescription for ibuprofen (“which is ridiculous because you can just buy it in the pharmacy”), a pair of crutches, and a warning not to try any more dangerous sports (“he saw me last week, he might think I’ve got a death wish.”)

“I’m sorry,” Cathy said, for approximately the millionth time, and for approximately the millionth time Anne waved the apology away.

“Not even the most accomplished skater can guard against marauding children,” she said, laughing at her own wit and then wincing as it jostled her ankle.

Cathy gave a wince of her own in sympathy and resisted the urge to apologise again. Instead she said, tentatively: “Thank you for teaching me. I had fun, until, well…”

Anne’s answering smile was very soft and very fond, and Cathy wished she was still feeling brave. But that momentary flash of bravery had been spilled out of her onto the ice, so she ducked her head, hiding her own smile.

After a moment, Anne started musing on when she might be able to wear her Heelys again, reminding Cathy that the doctor had recommended light exercise as soon as possible to keep the joint functional. When Cathy looked up to present the counter-argument that Heelys were not light exercise, the fond smile was gone.

That was good. That was safe.

(So why did she miss it already?)


End file.
